Web & Community

Podcast 17 is a weekly podcast that covers the latest news, reviews, interviews, gossip, rumours, websites, maps, mods, media releases and anything else related to the Half-Life universe. The show features William and his band of co-hosts, who invite various guest and interviewees onto the show. Check out or website for more information, previous shows, and a link to our forum where you can check all the agendas.
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This week James from Cry of Fear joins us on the show and we interview MuddaSheep from Half-Quake. We talk about the latest Portal and Left 4 Dead releases and we reveal the meaning behind our, perhaps convoluted, transmission numbers.

I don't think everyone will move to the NS Engine for mods. Source is here to stay, and for awhile, like HL1 still has tons of mods being released. Lots of other games, like UT2004, Doom 3, Q4, and whatever, have almost no modding community and yet said they would surpass Source, lol.

There are still mods being produced for Quake 2/3, UT 1, UT2K4, bad DOom 3 and Quake 4. The communities are large and solid and definitely not dead or shallow. Unreal 2004 has as many mods as source and many more have moved to the Unreal 3 engine. The team making these mods are massive and of a VERY high quality. Just because there are a lot of mods being made for source (many by less then 7 people), doesn't mean they are all of the quality that is being put into mods on larger, more open, and far more customizable engines.

Not saying Sourcemods are bad, because many are very good. The only downside I ever see to them is you can always still see HL2 in them or HL1 in them. They don't look like a completely different game. (Whether it be animations, sound effects, or overall feel you can always tell, just like on crysis mods).

You know, this might sound strange, but it seems to me Goldsource ( Hl1's engine ) has produced more mods in the same life span that HL2 has and most with a better quality. But that is more of my opinion anyways.

To be honest, mods and modding communities are only as good as the people who are working on them. ( Or the people in that community themselves )

In all truth it really all boils down to is the fact that if the gamers and modders both enjoy a game/engine enough there will be mods. ( For example, look at the GTA games, not soo easy to make mods for em but people have done it. a few good ones too. ) So to say that no one or hardly anyone will make mods for this game or that one when its not even out yet... seems a bit pre-mature to me.

On a side note...
Even games as old as the first doom still has a modding community. Yes it has shrunken, but it does exist... it just all depends on the fans of the game/engine and the willingness of the people who can mod and/or willing to learn how to mod.